Burns, a historian currently working on the Martin Luther King papers at Stanford, deftly analyzes the major protest movements of the 1960s involving women, blacks, the Vietnam War, and the New Left. The discrepancy between textbook democracy and pervasive social and political injustice in the United States “impelled many blacks, women, and youth to close the gap between ideal and reality.” Less certain, suggests Burns, are the long-term effects of these interconnected movements, each of which has lost its original fervor. Part of the publisher’s impressive “Social Movements Past and Present” series, this is a solid contribution to the growing 1960s literature.
– Kenneth F. Kister, Poynter Inst. for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Fla.